Design as a device

There is growing interest in design as a process of engagement with the world, which permits creativity and innovation and recognises the increasing complexity of emerging phenomena. The ‘creative industries’ espouse design as a key practice. So-called, ‘wicked problems’ embrace the methodologies of design. Other disciplines are enticed by the multi-disciplinarity of design. Design academics then seek to map and describe design from within, defining and revealing to those outside of design what makes design what it is. An alternative perspective is to look at design from the outside. This paper looks not at the particulars of design, but rather at design in the sense of a characteristic device. Specifically, it looks at the phenomenology of design applied as a device to generate (disclose) new possibilities in a humanities research project. A case is developed conceptually that sets design, not as some intrinsically configured, particularly articulate methodology for the future (a so-called, ‘third way’ within itself), but rather (and merely) as a device that effects disclosure through ‘introducing’.The paper draws on a particular case study. The case study came about because of a collaborative research project between communication, media and design academics. The research itself is fundamentally a humanities project, and aims to develop a re-imagining of a given text. This text describes a specific journey through Central Australia, undertaken in 1922, and represents a significant contribution to Australian historiography. The project involves providing a digital repository of cultural knowledge and materials spun from the book, composed of critical interpretations, supplementary documentation, illustrative photographs and video, and oral histories. Interestingly, the incorporation of an explicit design methodology for the visual mediation of the text to its various communities of interest has had an impact well beyond the specifics of the project itself. The academic participants have had to negotiate a common vocabulary in order for them to mediate the differences between communication and design as professional practices, and between the theory-guiding research principles of the project and its active realisation. This reveals an interesting perspective on design. The design methodology, based on visual mapping techniques, has been extended as a more formalised process of user engagement and knowledge representation within itself. This offers an interesting potential for visual communication design. This paper will describe the collaborative research project as a case study in how design and other disciplines intersect. Critically, it will argue that what design brings to such a situation may have less to do with design as a particular methodology, and more to do with design as a new device for understanding and engaging with the material content of the project. The paper will argue that significant qualities otherwise (and typically) attributed to ‘the nature of design’, can in fact be accounted for through the phenomenological concept of ‘introducing’. This alternative account has clear implications for the future ground of design, where design is either not able or cannot find ways to continue to function as this ‘new’ device